Anthony Horowitz

Anthony Horowitz (born 1955 in Middlesex) is a British novelist and screenwriter who writes in English. He is best known for his novels for young readers, many of them thrillers about espionage and mystery, but he has also worked in television, theatre and fiction for adults. His importance lies in bridging children's and young adult fiction with grown-up readers, without giving up on plot and pace.

He grew up in a comfortable Jewish family. His father had links to figures around Prime Minister Harold Wilson, and when bankruptcy loomed he moved his assets into Swiss bank accounts. The father died of cancer when Anthony was twenty-two, and the money was never recovered, which forced the family to sell its large house. Horowitz was educated at Orley Farm and later at Rugby, and took a degree in English literature at the University of York in 1977. He had decided on a writing career as a child and never seriously considered another path.

His first book, a comic adventure for children, appeared in 1979. The 1980s brought the Pentagram series, scripts for the television series Robin of Sherwood and Groosham Grange (1988), a boarding-school tale of witchcraft drawn partly from his own schooldays. He achieved fame with Stormbreaker (2000), the first Alex Rider novel, about a teenager recruited as a spy for MI6. He then launched The Power of Five, a modern reworking of the Pentagram idea, and wrote adult fiction such as The Magpie Murders (2016), a tribute to classic detective novels built around a story within a story.

Horowitz has written for ITV's Agatha Christie's Poirot and has been the main writer of Foyle's War and Midsomer Murders. More recently he was chosen to continue the James Bond novels using unpublished material by Ian Fleming, beginning with Trigger Mortis (2015). His legacy rests largely on how many young readers he brought to crime fiction and on his skill in blending classic puzzle plotting with contemporary storytelling.